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Saturday, April 16, 2016

Hooray, I was only lightly sore after last week's plank workout. My top two DOMS theories are 1) your body freaks out the first time (or the first time in a long time) you use a muscle and floods it with histamines and then when nothing bad happens, the next time it's like oh right, that muscle, it's all good and 2) microscopic muscle tears that repair when properly rested, watered, and fed. So my response to both is rest, water, and feed until I feel okay again, then repeat the same workout at the same intensity (and repeat the rest, water, and feed), and in this manner I train myself in the repeated use of said muscles, which trains said muscles—spirit and flesh, boon companions! Ah, there's so much to be said about this. But, onward:

This time I spotted myself seven seconds to set up between moves but I'm getting a little fussier about form, so I'm still a little short of 30 seconds on most of these moves. But, I didn't have to reset at all this time. This business of self-timing is a lot of work; sometimes I don't know why people would pay a trainer—viz., me, for basically having fun—but now I'm seeing why, in addition to having eyes on you. For which for now, I have this video:

I'll tell you what's much better this time around, I'm in a much straighter plank, not hinged, in those lateral walks. You see plenty of pictures of hinged planks out there, and I'm not saying that's wrong. I'm not a person that will say hardly any kind of movement is wrong—folding yourself in half backwards until your spine snaps, yeah, not so good, and a few other things like that—as a practitioner, I'm interested in the interesting positions a body can get itself into. Eh, I have a whole theory of planks that might be worth another post. Suffice to say for now that straight plank is more challenging than hinged plank; but there's nothing wrong with hinged plank if that's what you can do, especially when you add an added mobility challenge.

I'm doing a better job staying in plane for the side planks, including my head and neck. Though I think I'm getting the mobility for the hip drops more from hips hinging forward rather than torso laterally flexing. This might be because there's some basic geometry that I'm not getting about the side plank, I'll get back to you about that.

I'll tell you what I don't like, how my hips are swaying in the "circular" walk. Ideally I want my hips to stay level while my limbs, in this case just my arms, are moving underneath me.

Still not a fan of straight back plank, and I didn't do myself any favors trying to move my legs farther out. I would like my limbs to be vertical under me, so that leaves me to figure out what to do with my torso.

This is kind of bratty to say but since I'm hinging at the hip for those mountain climbers, that actually is a little rest break for me. The spideys are hard, though, at that point my shoulders are feeling the burn. Also I feel like I should be doing something else with those spideys, I'm going to play with that some more.

After that set of climbers/twist and drops/spideys, the bent back plank is bliss.

See you next week, same bat time, same bat channel, same bat program...